Jail Break

Peo­ple.

A momen­tous day has occurred.

I left the house,

in a car,

that I was driving!

[Insert girly squeal mixed with the Hal­lelu­jah cho­rus]

After over a month of near house arrest, I bust­ed out the front door like it was my last Eco­nom­ics class in college.

(Well, actu­al­ly I just had 2 surgeries…so I care­ful­ly opened the front door with my non-stitched-togeth­er-chest-mus­cle-arm and then took the steps one at a time so as not to dis­turb the 7 lay­ers of stitch­es in my abdomen…but…well…I can assure you it was with much pep and enthusiasm!)

The fact that post bust­ing down the door I drove to the doc­tor and then imme­di­ate­ly came home to take a nap is nei­ther here nor there. I did it myself!

Also most impor­tant­ly one of the fol­low­ing items did not bust out the front door:

1. Sneak­ers

2. Pene­lope the Pacemaker

3. A gas­tric fistula

I know. It’s the hol­i­day sea­son and I’m ask­ing a hard ques­tion to your fraz­zled brain. My most sin­cere apolo­gies. I’ll give you a hint: it begins with an F and ends with “istu­la.”

Fis­tu­la free, baby.

Despite the fact that this fis­tu­la formed pri­or to surgery #1 and took 2.5 weeks to prove to the world (ahem, med­ical com­mu­ni­ty) that it exist­ed, the tim­ing end­ed up being rather for­tu­itous. Even at only 3 weeks old, Pene­lope the Pace­mak­er proved her place in the world when I was on a clear liq­uid diet for over a week and my heart was sup­posed to just keep beat­ing every minute of the day (I’m so demand­ing. I like it when my lungs breathe too. So high main­te­nance, I know).

Let me just assure you, when your only clear options are broth, coconut water and cucum­ber juice, your blood pres­sure does­n’t exact­ly top the charts.

Fur­thered by the fact that my spe­cial­ty-com­pound­ed-yel­low-dye-free-non-nar­cot­ic-pain-med­i­cine required to be tak­en with food.

Ya know, to avoid dizziness.

Oops.

In oth­er news, post surgery #1 I have devel­oped an irreg­u­lar heartbeat.

Yep.

Take some time to soak that in.

I think I asked my car­di­ol­o­gist for clar­i­fi­ca­tion a min­i­mum of 6 times.

Head­line news: “Lady gets pace­mak­er insert­ed and devel­ops an irreg­u­lar heartbeat.”

Please refer to the busi­ness card: Sur­pris­ing the world with the rare and unusu­al since 1983.

Turns out in very rare cas­es (cough cough, when your name is Lydia Buschen­feldt), it can take up to 3 months for your heart to adjust to an abla­tion. And in the extra reas­sur­ing words of my fab­u­lous (no real­ly, he’s awe­some) car­di­ol­o­gist: “We don’t real­ly wor­ry until January.”

Stu­pen­dous. Any­one on a first name basis with Mr. Claus, by chance?

I’ve also been informed that I have offi­cial­ly been sent every sin­gle get well card in the Tar­get 99 cents col­lec­tion, and there­fore I have reached my lim­it for med­ical bonan­zas. So my goal for the month of Decem­ber is to stay at least 100 feet away from any­one hold­ing a knife and a nee­dle, and whin­ing about the diminu­tive nature of my veins.

I’m 8 days in, so far so good.

And if this goal should extend to, ya know, more than just December…I would­n’t be mad.

Just say­ing.

But more impor­tant­ly, any­one want to meet up?

I’ll dri­ve.